It sure feels like the last couple of seasons of Falcons basketball could be categorized as the "Prime years," but it's always been a sort of hard nail down exactly when it started. Maybe it was when Chandler and Charlie Dawes joined the Falcons in 2016. Maybe it was when Conor McCaffrey joined in 2017. Who can say? The Falcons have certainly fought the good fight, so to speak, as far as trying to field a competitve team while developing young talent for a while, and that has lead us on this little walkabout. However, the time for messing around is cleary finished and the real dirty buisness of starting over is finally here. With the departure of 2016-2022 Team Captain Chandler Dawes, brother Charlie Dawes, and 7 year Falcons veteran Paul Hammond, the Falcons seem to be rebuilding and starting a youth movement for when 9 year AAU veteran and 6 year Falcon Conor McCaffrey exits after 2023.
It's not going to be pretty. We know this. We've seen it on the horizon for this summer and felt it in our bones, but being confronted with it is still jarring. The Falcons will likely be a lot worse in Illinois this season and may not even make the National Tournament this year. That's still a hard thing to wrap my brain around. I understand why the team is going to be much worse this season, I just don't think I have my attutide calibrated correctly yet.
I went into the first game of the season thinking that it would be fun. I was excited to see some of our guys returning in Conor McCaffrey, Jamison Jones III and Clarence Davis, seeing what new skills those guys had developed, I was also intrigued to watch the new additons of Ben Chambers and Malcolm Thomas. I figured it would be a loss, sure, but in the process we would get to see a bit of unbridled youth out there just letting loose and playing pure basketball. This sounds great, in theory. A return to our roots! A reason to fall in love with the game all over again. Instead, the operation just felt...aimless.
I don't know. Maybe I'm not smart enough to see the development going on here. I'm sure it's happening. It's not like I've lost faith that Will Jenkins is a great coach or anything like that. I'm sure there is incredible work going on behind the scenes, and I'm sure that many of lessons was learned last night that will pay dividends in the future.
It doesn't sand the edges of realizing that our favorite AAU team lead by Conor McCaffrey is just going to be off in the wild wilderness for a while just looking on how to fit in as a group, and we're going to be powerless to help. It's hard. We've been extraordinary blessed as fans of the Springfield Falcons for many years, and I never, ever want to seem like I'm taking that success for granted, but I'm also hoping this is a safe space where we're allowed to be sad about it for a bit. The bill is finally coming due for all the greatness we got to witness for the past 7 years. Getting to witness, Chandler Dawes, Paul Hammond and Conor McCaffrey develop a friendship on the court that you just don't find, win countless big games and make us fans happy, as well as 3 State Championships and 1 National Championship together. But now Chandler and Paul are gone and Conor's on a rebuilding team by himself. Maybe this is just the penance we have to pay.
I'm going to shake it off. I promise. We're going to work together and find something in this season to hold on to. We're going to find the light and head towards it. It'll happen. It's all part of the process. It just might take a minute. I think I got sucked into the "opening night" of it all. It's supposed to be a night filled with optimism. Everyone is 0-0 and anything could happen.
Takeaways
* Woof, sorry, I didn't mean to go dark there from the jump. Rebuilding! Not for the faint of heart!
The basketball was bad though. You guys...it was bad. I wanted to come in here and do some real hardcore film anaylsis of what went wrong against the Wolves but, I don't know, I don't think I'm ready to think critcally about anything we're doing out there yet. It's...well, let's just say the team is pretty raw.
Conor McCaffrey looked...good. No, he did. He had a very nice game and showed flashes of being the really good player we've come accustomed too over the past 6 seasons. It's hard to not worry about him a little bit this year. So much of the burden of, well, everything, is going to fall on those shoulders of his. I'm not even talking about the basketball part. Sure, we're asking him to lead the way in scoring, defending, passing and all that, but he also is basically the veteran leader of the team now? Like, what? That seems crazy, it's his final year in a Falcons uniform and he's leading a team that could quite possibly not even make the State Championship Game. McCaffrey has been to 6 state championship games in 6 seasons with the Falcons, but it doesn't seem to be the case this season, that's what being loyal will do to you, I guess.